Was it really a week ago? Here are the elite runners starting:

What about the race? People I spoke to afterwards said it was the toughest half marathon they had run. A hilly course (one hill was about 3 miles long!) and hot weather (record temperature for the day in Nashville). About 80-85, but there was a breeze. With the lower humidity (compared to here in the Houston area) it didn't seem all that bad, but there was a long dry section in the middle where I got dehydrated. I started to feel it and decided that the smart thing would be to walk the rest of the way. I broke into a trot occasionally, but mostly walked the last half, and still came in within 3 minutes of my estimated half marathon time.

Probably because I started out too fast. Being one of the slower runners, I was in the next to the last corral of over 30,000 runners. This meant that it was more than an hour after the start before I crossed the starting line. The winner was just finishing!

By then, I was ready to move and, although I thought I was going slow, when I looked at my GPS I was almost 2 minutes under my normal pace. Time to slow down. I held a moderate pace for the first third of the race and was then ready to step it up.

My experience in long runs, though, had taught me to hold back until later. Given the way it turned out, it was probably just as well, because I felt quite dizzy after the finish and was ready to sit down for a bit to recover. I learned later that the female winner vomited several times after the finish, and one man died. 40-50 people were hospitalized, and I saw several casualties on the roadside getting the cramps out of their legs.

My goal was to finish the race healthy, so I was very satisfied with my result. My secondary goal was to make it in under 4 hours, and my estimate was 3:43. I actually made it in 3:46:02 on the chip, although the clock said 4:47 or something like that. Of course, I forgot to turn off my GPS at the finish (why do I always do that?) so had to wait for the official result to find out my time.


The really cool thing is to look at the route on the map when I upload the GPS results to my computer. Did I really run all that way? A half marathon looks impressive on a road map, but the marathon course looks really awesome.

For the record, I use a Garmin Forerunner 205, which I bought from my discount running store. I don't leave home without it!

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